Jenny McCarthy

Jenny McCarthy
McCarthy in May 2006
Born	Jennifer Ann McCarthy (1972-11-01) November 1, 1972 (age 44) Evergreen Park, Illinois U.S.
Other names	Jenny Wahlberg
Alma mater	Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School
Occupation	Actress, model, television host, comedian, author, activist, screenwriter
Years active	1993–present
Spouse(s)	John Asher (m. 1999–2005) Donnie Wahlberg (m. 2014)
Partner(s)	Jim Carrey (2005–10)
Children	1
Relatives	Melissa McCarthy (cousin) Joanne McCarthy (sister) Mark Wahlberg (brother-in law) Robert Wahlberg (brother-in-law) Joyce Bulifant (ex-mother-in-law)

Jennifer Ann "Jenny" Wahlberg (née McCarthy; born November 1, 1972) is an American actress, model, television host, comedian, author, screenwriter, and anti-vaccine activist. She began her career in 1993 as a nude model for Playboy magazine and was later named their Playmate of the Year. McCarthy then parlayed her Playboy fame into a television and film acting career. She is a former co-host of the ABC talk show The View.

McCarthy has written books about parenting and has become an activist promoting research into environmental causes and alternative medical treatments for autism. She has promoted the idea that vaccines cause autism and that chelation therapy helped cure her son of autism. Both claims are unsupported by medical consensus, and her son's autism diagnosis has been questioned. McCarthy has been described as "the nation's most prominent purveyor of anti-vaxxer ideology", but she has denied the charge, stating: "I am not anti-vaccine".

McCarthy grew up in Evergreen Park, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago) and South West Chicago. She was born to a working-class Catholic family, and has Irish, German, and Polish ancestry. She lived in the West Elsdon neighborhood of Chicago. She is the second of four daughters; her sisters are named Lynette, Joanne, and Amy. Actress Melissa McCarthy is her cousin. McCarthy's mother, Linda, was a housewife and courtroom custodian, and her father, Dan McCarthy, was a steel mill foreman.

As a teenager, McCarthy attended Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School (whose school sweater she donned in the pages of Playboy) and was a cheerleader at both Brother Rice High School and St. Laurence High School, although she has referred to herself as an "outcast" at her school and has stated she was repeatedly bullied by classmates. She spent two years at Southern Illinois University.